THE GREAT AMERICAN MUD SHOW MOST TENT CIRCUSES HAVE REACHED THE END OF THE ROAD, BUT A FEW, LIKE THE ALLAN C. HILL CIRCUS OF SARASOTA, STILL FOLLOW THE OLD TRADITIONS, MOVING FROM TOWN TO TOWN WITH A TIMELESS PROMISE OF JOY.

THE DIESEL ENGINES ROAR AWAKE IN the dark of 4 a.m., and another day begins for the show that never ends. The early call, the caravan of trucks down a highway -- it happens every day from early spring to late fall, this quest to bring an empty place to life.

Men fan out across a vacant lot, their long morning shadows keeping step. They anchor the spikes, and before noon the magic is building all over again.

It still lives on, this old-fashioned rite that pulls at your heart: Out in the field, the circus is raising the big top in another American town.

Elephants in harness haul the poles into place, and the tent swells into its full shape. Flags flutter with the morning breeze, and the ground swarms with hard-edged men swinging hammers, tugging ropes and uncoiling miles of electrical cords. As elephants and camels lazily munch grass, people on their way to work do double takes from their cars.

There is still something about a circus that turns a special page within us. Something in this world of animals and acrobats, of clowns and big-top bustle, fills us with the wonder of a child. Maybe it really is the greatest show on earth.

There was a time in the simpler past when scores of circuses crossed the country, stopping for a day and then moving on to the next little town. When the circus train came in, children declared their own holiday and raced to water the elephants or be the first to glimpse the lions and tigers.

The gaudy red wagons would clatter through town to the beat of a brass band, and the elephants would always close the parade, marching trunk-to-tail, with the baby running along behind. It was pure P.T. Barnum, of course, all bluster and bluff and ringmaster patter. But something about the circus was wholesome and pure, something in it made children laugh and dream with wide-open eyes.

It's almost surprising that kids today know anything at all about the circus, in this age of Nintendo, Bart Simpson and general urban malaise. Yet kids still come to marvel at leopards leaping through fire, at elephants standing on their heads, at the daring grace of the woman on the trapeze.

A dozen hardy shows remain on the road, keeping a culture alive. The circus has tradition, an elaborate formality, its own legends and language.

"You can't just call it a job," says Mike Ridenour. "It's more of a lifestyle."

Ridenour first worked at the age of 7 with his father, a clown and circus manager. Now, 20 years later, he is Omar Gosh, the chief clown of Allan C. Hill's Great American Circus. He is too young to remember the cutthroat days of competing circuses.

"Back then," he says, "workers from other circuses would tear down your posters and get in fights over who put on the best show."

He pauses for a moment, glances up at the red-white-and-blue big top, then adds, "I would fight for the circus, too."

The Great American Circus left its home in Sarasota on March 4 of this year and did not return until Nov. 19. It traveled 25,000 miles, playing in 18 states from Florida to Maine. It is the second largest tented circus in the country, after the Clyde Beatty-Cole Brothers Circus. (The largest and best known circus of all -- Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey -- packed away its tent in 1956 and now appears only in indoor arenas.)

Except for a few two- or three-day stands, the Great American Circus was at a different place every day, putting on more than 400 shows in 220 towns. Easter Sunday was the only day off.

"We have to show under every condition -- mud, rain, it doesn't matter," says the owner, Allan Hill. "The show goes on."

For that reason, a traveling tent circus is called a "mud show," and it is the place where circus tradition runs deepest.

Mud shows have made Hill a rich man. Today, at 42, he drives a red Jaguar V- 12 convertible and visits his circus in a custom-built $250,000 bus. He was once featured in Cosmopolitan as Bachelor of the Month. In spite of the recession, his circus business is up 20 percent.

"I wouldn't trade it for the world," he says. "It's the only thing I know."

Hill's mother was a third-generation performer, and his father ran away with the circus as a little boy, ending up as a manager. Hill spent his childhood on the midway, selling concessions and twirling cotton candy.

"You get sawdust in your shoes," he says, invoking an old adage.

Hill quit school in the ninth grade, later joined the Army and earned a Bronze Star in Vietnam. Returning to Florida, he became the promoter and leasing agent for the Hoxie Brothers Circus of Miami. Eight years ago he bought the circus and moved it to Sarasota. His hobby is collecting old-time circus wagons -- he has 19 in all -- and every winter he brings them out for a parade through Sarasota.

"The circus is the oldest entertainment institution in the world," Hill says with a sense of pride. "George Washington himself attended the first American circus."

He may be right. A man named John Bill Ricketts introduced the first circuses in Philadelphia and New York in 1793, and President Washington could very well have been there.

Tent circuses got their start in the 1820s and reached their zenith a century later. Before it stopped touring, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus performed under a big top rising 65 feet high and holding more than 10,000 spectators. At its peak just before World War II, Ringling needed four trains to carry its show. Circuses move people and equipment so efficiently, they have been studied by military tacticians.

The Great American Circus travels in 13 trucks, not including the vans and trailers of performers. The big top is 35 feet high, 190 feet long and holds 2,500 people. It's not unusual for every seat to be filled.

BRIAN LaPALME STANDS BEHIND THE big top and blows a whistle three times. It's five minutes till showtime. His blond hair is brushed straight back, he wears a glittery black vest and a black bow tie, and has center-ring presence.

As assistant ringmaster of the Great American Circus, his job is to pump enthusiasm into every show.

"Amazing!" he declaims, in a rolling voice. "Incredible!"

After introducing other acts he takes his own turn in the center ring as a fire-eater, putting out burning torches with his mouth.

"Ladies and gentlemen," intones Bill Brickle, the other ringmaster, "Brian LaPalme now presents the very dangerous HUMAN VOLCANO!"

Brian races into the ring, accompanied by a siren and flashing red lights. He takes a long draft from a pewter stein, filling his mouth with kerosene. He bends on one knee, holding a torch to a flame as if he were making an offering. The lights darken until the only illumination in the tent is Brian's torch. And then, to the left, to the right and to the front, he shoots three mighty bursts of flame from his mouth.

As the ringmaster solemnly advises children not to attempt such a hazardous feat at home, Brian rushes to his trailer to rinse his mouth and brush his teeth. His doctor and dentist have told him to give up fire-eating, warning him of the danger of putting gasoline and kerosene in his mouth. But Brian LaPalme is a showman, and this is how he earns his living.

At the age of 33, he has already spent 15 years on the back roads of show business. After high school, he thought of becoming a chef, and was accepted at the prestigious Culinary Institute of America, but the call of the circus was stronger. He began as a clown, then joined the sideshow of a traveling carnival, announcing all the oddities that make people squirm with forbidden fascination.

It was called "making the bally" -- short for ballyhoo. Most of us would have called LaPalme a "barker," but the proper term is "front talker." Brian learned to read faces and knew just how to make people yield to curiosity. He polished his delivery, projecting his voice in a rich, resonant baritone.

He started a magic act, which he still performs, then became a fire-eater and sword-swallower. He gave up the swords after he punctured his stomach.

"Being in a sideshow for four years," says Brian, "was, for me, like college."

His home is a trailer with a Connecticut license plate. It is a life not everyone can appreciate, and Brian has two divorces to show for it. But now he has a girlfriend who understands, because she's a trapeze artist.

"When I was nine," says Donna Moos, "my dad got tired of his job, packed the family up and joined the circus." Even her 77-year-old grandmother went along -- as a cook.

Fifteen years later, after taking time out for college, Donna is back with the circus as "LaDonna, our lovely aerial ballerina."

She shrugs when you ask her about the danger. "I know what can happen," she says. "But I like what I'm doing too much to give it up."

For Donna, growing up in the circus was far from a footloose life. Her parents were always nearby, so she never became caught up in drugs or the petty rivalries of adolescence. Mexican-born performers taught her Spanish, and she learned the trapeze from playing on circus equipment as a girl. She was performing in the center ring by the time she was 16.

AT THE AGE OF 14, EROS ESPANA IS learning the tricks of his father's trade. An aspiring juggler, Eros is the youngest performer in the company.

"Sometimes I wish I lived in a normal town," he says wistfully, "because other kids go to summer camp, and I've never done that."

But he also knows that his life has more excitement than any summer camp could offer: "If my parents quit the circus and moved to a town, I'd probably go out of my mind."

The circus has taken Eros throughout the United States and Europe. Though he does not go to school, he is fluent in three languages -- English, Spanish and German. Because his parents are divorced (his German mother is a circus performer in Europe), Eros has spent the last year on the road with his father and stepmother. Every day he must complete academic assignments before he is permitted to work on his routines.

For an hour before every show, Eros practices his juggling alone in the big top. After his performance -- while the circus is still in progress -- he goes behind the tent and balances on his hands for up to two hours.

"I'm glad my dad is teaching me," he says, "because without him I would probably be shoveling elephant crap or something."

His father, Ramon Espana, has been a circus performer since he was 6. He is a balancing artist who performs stunts that are, quite simply, astonishing.

"He will show you," announces Brian LaPalme, "why he has become known in his native Yucatan, among circus people and the townspeople alike, as RAMON, EL MAGNIFICO!"

Grasping a single vertical pole, Ramon balances his body parallel to the earth, then raises one leg in the air. He places two swords together, point to point, grips the handle of the top one and balances above the swords with his feet high overhead. He balances his entire body weight on just one finger -- or so it appears.

Ramon grew up in a Mexican circus family, and as a child he had to practice for two hours every day before breakfast. He has spent his entire life refining an esoteric talent, but now he is 41 years old and his back is beginning to ache. He wonders, for himself and for his son, how much longer the magical world of the circus can last.

"The life is nice," he says, "but I see no future in it. The truth is, I wish I had the ability to move Eros in another direction."

But another veteran of the circus can only smile when he looks at the future. Bill Brickle has spent 35 years with performing dogs and as a ringmaster.

"Contrary to belief, the circus is not dying," he affirms. "Our attendance has proven that. They still flock to the big top each and every day."

OF THE 90 OR SO PEOPLE WHO travel with Allan Hill's circus, fewer than a dozen are performers. Most of the rest belong to an unseen army of electricians, animal keepers, truck drivers, painters, equipment handlers, mechanics, concessionaires and cooks.

The men of the "back yard" -- it is an overwhelmingly male province -- are a hard lot, for whom a life of endless travel and low pay is a step up in the world. They wear sunburns and tattoos, and few can smile with a full set of teeth. They are often reluctant to give their full names or their histories.

They are known by their nicknames: Turtle, Shorty, Pops, Low-Pockets, Popcorn, Zoom. For some, the circus is their first real home.

"We keep a lot of people off welfare," says Allan Hill. "For many of these guys, this is the only family they have."

Some of them simply do not fit in the workaday world. One man "feeds" his feet every day, pouring juice into his shoes or filling them with tuna. Another likes to sleep on the ground, and twice in the past year has been run over by trucks. But they have talent in electronics and mechanics, and the circus offers them a job and a home.

SIX YEARS AGO THE GREAT AMERICAN Circus made its annual tour through upper New York State. A Watkins Glen farmboy named Billy Bob saw the show and decided it was the life for him. Today one of his jobs is to guide Irene, a 7,000-pound Indian elephant, as she raises the big top every morning and lowers it at night.

Rough-edged and good-humored, Billy Bob has huge hands and no front teeth. As he blinks away the sleep on a Sunday morning, you can see a fresh cut on his middle finger, just below the knuckle.

Minutes later, an electrician emerges from a truck, wearing a puffy eye and swollen lip. Later, Billy Bob will apologize. No hard feelings -- it's just another day on the road.

Despite the occasional fistfight, the workers share an easy camaraderie, a pride at being part of the circus and its traditions.

"Up in the morning, down at night," chants a tent worker named Big-Top Shorty, "big-top crew will do it right!"

John Bittner says he had 500 people working for him when he was a design engineer for a sporting-goods company. He was offered his choice of working in Paris or Hong Kong, but as a former POW in Vietnam he reached his snapping point instead and refused an overseas transfer.

"I climbed up on the owner's desk," he recalls, "and told him where he could put his company."

At the age of 50, he joined the circus as a truckdriver, electrician and "morning greaser" -- breakfast cook. He says he turned down a $75,000 job to stay with the circus because he likes the closeness, the friendship, the quiet respect he has earned.

"I've been on my own since I was 8 years old," Bittner explains. "Here I've got a family. I'm called Papa John."

The work of the back yard is dirty and hard. The hours go on forever, and sometimes a week passes between showers. Men shave outdoors with a hand mirror and wash out of a bucket.

"We get up at 4 o'clock," says Billy Bob, the elephant handler. "Some of us don't see our beds until 11:30 or midnight."

For this, the typical roustabout, or circus hand, makes $100 a week, plus bunk and board. But to someone whose life has been going nowhere, the circus has a special appeal: It is forever on the move, and there is always a new town tomorrow.

People who choose this life are proud of it. For many, the circus brings newfound self-respect. Though we don't often think of sweaty men earning $100 a week as sensitive or living by ideals, how else can we explain their devotion?

"Every day I wake up and want to see a kid smile," says the hard-fisted Billy Bob. "Ain't no money in the world can make a kid smile."

JOHNNY WALKER DIED ON THE ROAD this year. He was Allan Hill's concessions manager, and he was killed in a crash in Panama City in March. The circus grieved, but in public it could not mourn. There were two shows to put on that night.

Johnny Walker's widow, Alice, took time to bury him, then went back to work.

Alice Walker was a trapeze artist in her youth, and her grandchildren are the sixth generation of her family in the circus. She knows the road is what gives the circus its life, so she took over her husband's job and went to all the towns he would never see.

Every day, the circus offers a glimpse of the extraordinary, a world beyond our own. It is a place where children never grow old, and amazement never ends. Wild animals leap through fire, a man balances on one finger, and a young woman flies through the air.

As children look up, wonder flares across their faces, and the old show is young once more.

"As long as there are children," says Allan Hill, "there will be a circus."